


Survival

by le_chat_vilain



Series: The Joker and the Thief [25]
Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Action, Angst, F/M, Violence, coarse language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:10:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5987158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/le_chat_vilain/pseuds/le_chat_vilain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaire and Jay face the moment of truth, seeing if they can really pull this thing off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survival

**Author's Note:**

> [TW: violence] It’s all coming together now but is it going to work? If he’s so much as a second late she could be done for. This chapter’s a little Jay, and then mostly Blaire.
> 
> Musical inspiration is Survival by Eminem

Blaire pranks me again to let me know she’s waiting outside Arkham’s office just as I’m skidding into the parking lot at the asylum. It took me way longer to get here than expected, but I’m so fucking relieved I made it in time. If this plan is even thirty seconds behind at this point she’s a dead woman and I’ll never be able to live with that.

I know that sounds hard to believe coming from me, but every rule has an exception and she’s mine. She’s the only person apart from myself who’s wellbeing I give a shit about – in fact, I’d even go as far as to say I care more about hers than mine nowadays. Whether that’s because I really do love her, or because I find the idea of the boring fucking waste of time my life would be without her absolutely soul crushing, I don’t know. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what love is, an absolute inability to even consider surviving without the other person. If that’s the case, then I’ve had it bad for that crazy bitch since that first night I fucked her.

And I’m not gonna let her down. No fucking way. I just have to get Bats to follow me.

I hit the brakes hard and send him flying off the roof, over the hood, and across the gravel, then emerge from the car and get ready for a fight. Crowbar in hand, I swing it up into his face with a laugh then get moving. Blaire’s text told me I needed to get to the administration block, which thankfully is the front of house here so I’m on the right side of the compound.

“Come on, Bats! You’re not gonna let a little rough ride get you down are ya? Tag, you’re it! Betcha can’t catch me!” I give him a few punts to the ribs before snickering at him and heading for the front door. Pistol reloaded and ready to fire in one hand, trusty bit of metal in the other, I start running as soon as I hear him get up. Busting down the doors, I come face to face with a fat-ass security guard busy stuffing his face with Doritos and probably considering having a sad fap on the job.

“You might wanna hit that panic button there, buddy, go on,” I tell him, and wait until he does. “Thank you kindly.”

I plant a bullet between his eyes and keep moving, stealing his access card on my way past and swiping myself in to the wing of the building that houses the offices and all the boring shit.

“Joker! Where do you think you’re going?” Bats calls out to me in that smokes-two-packs-a-day voice he puts on.

“Keep up and you’ll find out, Batsy!” I tell him. He’s not always the quickest man in the mental race, but he’s definitely no fool. He surely knows by now I’ve led him here for a reason. I mean, it’s not like I’ve gone to any effort to hide that fact, it just seemed…I don’t know, too much of a muchness really. But I suppose I should try to look like I’m not doing a good turn here, which is sort of how we’ve ended up painting the picture. “Oh, Jerry! Here comes Mr. J!”

***

“I can’t decide if you’re incredibly stupid, brave, or just that damn arrogant,” Jeremiah cackles at me. “Do you have a death wish, child?”

I watch closely as his gaze drops to the revolver on his desk and then back to my face, and I make a grab for it immediately, wagering it’s loaded with X rounds. Fortunately I’m closest and I get there first, flinging it into the fire behind me.

“Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting,” he remarks with genuine confusion.

“You think that’s a surprise? You just wait, mate,” I reply, and pick up a paper weight from his desk to launch it at his head. Come on, cunt, fight me. You need to fucking fight me.

“Now that was rude!” he says, and I watch as he reaches inside his lab coat and procures the mask. Fuck. How, how did we fucking forget about that fucking mask. I move faster than I ever have in my life to knock it from his hand, taking a fist to the stomach in the process when he catches me by the arm.

Now for the painful part: I have to let him lay into me.

I pretend to fight back as his fist connects with my face over and over. Just as he lifts me by the throat to slam me down on his desk, the door bursts open and Jay’s sent laughing and staggering backwards over the couch, and onto the floor, followed by a very pissed off Batman.

As soon as Bats sees me in that orange getup, he jumps to the exact conclusion we were betting our lives on that he would.

“Arkham! Release that inmate!” he growls, forgetting about Jay completely and heading straight for Jeremiah, making the choice we’d also bet our lives on that he would. He has such a predictable impulse to save people.

“Please, Batman, help me! He’s hurting me! Please don’t let him hurt me anymore! Please!” I whimper, playing the damsel in distress, drawing the Bat’s attention even more as Jay makes a scramble for the floor grate. Hopefully by now Victor’s come to so there’s a nice blood trail for him to follow out.

“She’s not an inmate, she’s-”

Crack. Batman’s fist makes contact with Jeremiah’s jaw, sending him stumbling backwards before his boot makes contact with his stomach, landing Jeremiah on his ass on the floor. It’s over in seconds once Batman gets him in a choke hold and knocks him out cold.

“Oracle, I need EMTs to Arkham immediately, and I need the commissioner here too – I caught Dr. Arkham assaulting a patient in his office…I was chasing Joker and he seems to have led me here…no, he’s given me the slip, but he must still be here somewhere…I assume he’s after the compound X, I’m going after him now,” Batman relays into some kind of earpiece in that ridiculous helm of his. He cuffs Jeremiah to a nearby pipe and then turns his attention to me.

“Miss, stay here, help is on the way,” is all he says before taking his leave and locking the door behind him, securing the injured ‘inmate’ in his mind, I’m sure. I make a move for Jeremiah’s computer, reefing open the chassis with a letter opener and tearing out the hard drive, turfing it into the fire before replacing the panel and going back to my distraught girl act just in time for a nurse to bust through the door first aid kit in hand.

“Oh…oh shit, you poor thing, let’s move you to the infirmary,” he stammers, and lifts me up to carry me all the way there. I loop my arms around this stranger’s neck and nuzzle into his chest, putting on the waterworks and sobbing away. Thankfully he can’t see that the wounds to my face are already healed because of the blood that’s been streaming down it. I need to get outside to make my escape, and I need him to take me there. This is going to hurt.

I look up and he’s not paying attention to me at all, so I grab the knife from my bra and slide it down my jumpsuit, pushing it up into my ribs. Then I wait for him to feel me bleeding through, or to start coughing up blood, whichever comes first.

“Oh fuck!” he exclaims when he notices, and then we hear the ambulance sirens fast approaching. “Shit, shit, shit I do not have the expertise to deal with that, we better get you out there to those guys.”

He turns tail and heads for the nearest emergency exit until he’s running with me out into the car park, screaming out to the paramedics that have just arrived on the scene. I’m flung onto a gurney and they start working on me immediately.

“Shit! We’re losing her! She’s not gonna make it…” is the last thing I hear before everything goes black. Hopefully I don’t take too long to come back from this.

I’d wager it probably took around ten minutes, because I’m already unattended, covered with a sheet in the back of an ambulance when I start gulping for oxygen again. Sneaking a peek out the window, I’m glad to see we’re still out at the asylum. There’s cops crawling about the place, as well as Arkham staff and EMTs, and I need to make a stealthy escape.

But it’s not gonna happen in this bright fucking orange jumpsuit.

Looking to my left, I see a cupboard with “staff” written on it, and bust it open. Much to my relief, there are spare sets of scrubs in there and they’re a wonderful shade of midnight blue; perfect. I slip out of the orange and into the new clean scrubs, putting a mask over my nose and mouth and making a break for it from the back doors of the ambulance the second the coast is clear.

Once I’m clear of the commotion, I take off running through the woods towards the exit to the tunnel. My heart is racing because if Jay’s there waiting for me we’ve done it, we’ve actually pulled it off. My feet fly over fallen branches and snarls of thorny vines until I can just see the light glinting off the chrome tail pipe of my motorcycle, and then I push myself as fast as I can go.

But when I arrive, he’s not there.

“No, no, no! Come on, baby, you have to be almost here, please…” I frantically whisper to myself. My heart is racing and it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out my throat as I drop to my knees and just stare down the tunnel waiting in hope. “Jay!”

I keep wailing his name down into the darkness, each cry more desperate than the last. If I lose him again, I don’t think I’ll survive it, not knowing that the whole reason we’re here tonight is because I wanted this; there’s no Harley and her puppy dog eyes to shift the blame onto this time. We’re here because of me.

Because I was the one who just had to know, I had to know if we had a future past the next three months.

Because I’m selfish and I can’t let go of this thirst for knowledge and vengeance.

Because I can’t even for a second entertain the notion of living without him. I can’t. I won’t. I’m so hopelessly addicted to him that I’ll risk anything and everything to keep my living, breathing, fucking, heroin supply alive. Without him, I’m as good as dead, whether my body’s still up and walking or not, that is how irreversibly yoked to each other we are now.

I keep crying out into the void until my voice is hoarse and I’m too exhausted to keep going. I flop down into the dirt, and call his phone, over and over again, and not once does he answer. I fight the urge to even consider what I know at this point to be true, but ultimately fail.

He’s not coming. He’s not coming and that means he’s gone.


End file.
